Different
by BrokenButStillStanding
Summary: "Gendry was different". A series of Gendrya oneshots.
1. Protection

It had taken him a while, but Gendry had figured it out. He supposed he shouldn't be so hard on himself, for it seems he had figured it out well ahead of any of the other men in the camp. It was a good thing too.

The small boy who had threatened to skewer Hot Pie, the one who seemed so full of rage that he could barely contain it, was actually a girl.

It was pretty obvious when he really thought about it. Even if you ignored the fact that she would run off on her own to take a leak, or that she never changed her clothing in front of the others, it was still fairly obvious that she was a girl. A short haircut and some dirt couldn't hide the fact that she had feminine features, and even if she did reach the Wall it would only be harder to hide as she grew older.

Her eyes were large and wide, her eyelashes fanning out across her lids. Her nose was small and her lips were full, her face soft and round. If she really did happen to be a boy then she was the most feminine one he had ever seen.

It made him think about why a girl like her was here. She wouldn't be accepted at the Wall, so why try to go there at all? He supposed if she was an orphan like he was then it was a better fate than ending up working at a brothel for the rest of her life, but he doubts she had even flowered yet so that wouldn't have been an option for her anyways. So why would this angry little girl lump herself in with thieves, rapists, murderers, and worse? He may have thought she had a lover at the Wall she wished to reunite with, but she was far too young to have a story such as that.

Yoren knew. That much he was sure of. He would catch the older man keeping a close eye on her, he would watch her from a distance as she did the tasks he had set them to for the day. He never came up to speak to her, but she seemed to know that he was aware of her real identity if her returning glances were anything to go by. Why Yoren hadn't done anything about it was beyond Gendry, he would spend his nights contemplating what her goal could possibly be by going to the Wall.

Little by little, Gendry found himself watching over her too. He was never too far away, a horrible thought tugging in the back of his head that if he had figured out her secret then it wouldn't take long for someone else to as well. Especially a particular man in the cage they had been carting along, he would often catch the hooded man following the young girl around the camp with his eyes. He had no doubt as to what some of these men would do to her if they discovered her true gender, some of them even watched her like a hawk already as she made for a rather pretty boy. Gendry's tall form often scared them away from trying anything stupid, so he hovered by as much as he could.

It was on one of these days he found her talking to the man in the cage who had been keeping close watch of her, seeming to argue with them as the man behind him spat in rage. However her stalker seemed calm, giving her a small smile as he spoke again. Gendry's pace quickened as he cut in front of their conversation, relieved when she began to follow him without prompting.

"Yoren said none of us were to go near those three" he scolded.

"They don't scare me" she bit back. Gendry felt his heart jump a bit in his chest, why did she feel the need to have to be so brave?

"Hmmm? Then you're stupid. They scare me" he responded, and he wasn't lying. Those men were in a cage for good reason, he wasn't fool enough to go near them.

She couldn't argue any more before the gold cloaks interrupted them. He had barely turned around to see where his small companion had gone when she had ducked down behind him, hiding from the men she was convinced were looking for her.

Why would the Queen send gold cloaks all the way here for a little girl? The brief thought crossed his mind that maybe she had killed someone, she certainly seemed tough enough, but he couldn't get the thought to resonate with his head. But then they announced the name of the person they were looking for, and it wasn't a girl's.

It was his.


	2. Three Times Gendry

**AN: trigger warning for mentions of noncon, death, and torture. This follows the book rather than the tv series, in which rather than Sansa marrying Ramsay it is her childhood friend Jeyne Poole who is believed by the people to be Arya at the time.**

Gendry could count three times in which he could feel his heart breaking, each one seemed to be worse than the other.

The first time he felt it break was when he heard Arya screaming, pleading with the Brotherhood to save him, begging with Melisandre not to hurt him. Of course neither heeded her wishes, but he felt lower than dirt. She asked him to come with her, offered him a family, and he had denied her in favor of a group of men who turned him over for gold the first chance they got. He could hardly feel surprised as Melisandre turned on him, his heart still numb from the shock of it.

This was a girl who didn't care about his status as a bastard, she was someone who loved him for who he was and trusted him with all her heart, and he had betrayed that trust. He had done it in an attempt to protect her, but it doesn't change the fact that he did. Even as he sat in the dungeon where Melisandre kept him he sat and wondered. Would things have been any different had he known his true parentage? He didn't think it would change anything for Arya, she never had cared much for titles and nobility, but perhaps he would have found himself even the slightest bit more worthy. It didn't matter now. He wouldn't be legitimized even in his wildest dreams, his father was now dead.

He worried for her, the Brotherhood had no reason to keep her around, and without him there was no one to protect her. He wished more than anything that Hot Pie had continued on their journey with them, just so she wouldn't be all alone again. He prayed that she hadn't been harmed, he tried not to think about all the horrors that could have befallen her.

The second time he felt it break was when he heard of what had befallen the Twins. How Arya's brother and mother had been brutally slaughtered. That in itself was enough to break his heart, but he really felt it snap in half when he had heard an offhand rumor that the Stark's youngest daughter had also been in attendance. Arya was dead.

He didn't think he had ever felt that much pain in his entire life. He spent his nights sleeplessly staring up at the ceiling, all his dreams filled with colorful images of all the various ways his little friend could have met her demise. She would have fought them, there was no doubt about that, but she was so small. He could still remember how tiny she was, smaller even than the other girls her age, no matter how skilled she was she could not stand up to an entire army herself. He dreamt of her screaming as she was stabbed, as she was torn in two with a blade sticking through her, as she wailed at the sight of the family she had worked so hard to get back to murdered in front of her eyes. Sometimes his dreams were particularly cruel and included her screaming out for him to help her before the light left her eyes.

He wondered if she thought of him. He felt disgusted when it crossed his mind, Arya was dead and all he could think about was if she remembered him in her final moments.

He had sobbed the night after the first terrors haunted his dreams. The spirited spitfire of a girl was dead. The one person who didn't care one bit about where he came from, only who he was, was dead. The best person he had ever met was dead.

The third time he felt his heart break was by far the worst. It felt as thought it was being ripped in two, the shreds of it floating away in the wind as they slipped through his fingers.

Arya had not been at the Twins after all, but the fate she had met was far worse. She had married the bastard Ramsay Bolton. A legitimized bastard. A bastard that wasn't him. That was;t the worst of it, he had heard stories of what kind of monster this bastard was. He had heard the most gut wrenchingly horrible tales of mutilation, rape, murder, and torture. He heard that the screams and sobs of the youngest Lady Stark rang so loudly through surrounding towns that the people could hardly stomach it and Northern families were starting to rally.

Gendry couldn't imagine. For the sake of his sanity he didn't allow himself to imagine. He didn't imagine what could make her scream and cry like all the stories said. He didn't imagine the brutality in which the Bolton bastard must have abused her. He didn't imagine her confusion and terror as her husband took her against her will, over and over again. He couldn't imagine.

But once again his dreams had no problem filling in the blanks for him.

He had taken to not sleeping. He would stay up as long as he could physically stand it before his body crashed and he passed out into such a deep sleep that any dreams he had were lost to him upon his awakening. His guilt was immeasurable. If only he hadn't left her, if he had come with her when he asked, he could have protected her. He doubted he could have protected her from this, but at least he could have died trying.

After all, what is a bastard's life in comparison to hers?


End file.
